Tag Archives: Lawrence Kansas

My Philosophy Circa 1970

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Excerpts from the Hardly Working chapter titled Fried Pie and the Redneck Brothers…

My first Kansas summer found me at a crossroads. By now, it was easier for me to list the things I didn’t believe in than those that I did. I was skeptical of marriage, careers, the Vietnam War, government—in short, most of society’s institutions. That was for squares, man. I wanted no one to tell me what to do or to think. The choices I made had to be mine. All mine. In a notebook I scribbled, live as if your life depended on it.

I hatched a plan, a life map where I would “retire” at the beginning of adulthood. Of course, I would need to work, but as little as possible. And nothing career oriented. Hell, I had no idea what I might do.

Though I never referred to myself as a hippie, that was my stereotype. If you had long hair and wore threadbare clothes, you were a hippie. It was a look. Simple as that. You are how you look. In 1971, if you looked like a hippie, one could extrapolate that you smoked grass, were anti-war and laughed at the American Dream. Being a hippie made you feel like an outsider in a culture that you didn’t wish to fully participate in. And that made you feel kind of good, like it was your best chance to experience the heroic status of the minority. Minority heroes were the hip heroes. Rosa Parks, Caesar Chavez, Huey Newton, the New York rabble rouser, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Garcia, the acid guitar shaman with the Latino last name.

I didn’t believe in society’s institutions, but I did have my beliefs. Very strong ones. I believed in the magic of existence; the magic around every corner; the magic of the moment. And now, the magic of guitar playing. During that melting summer of 1970, alongside teaching myself to seem crazy, I taught myself to play the guitar. I wanted to write songs. My inner voice needed an outlet. Because I hadn’t begun playing during the typical teenage timeframe, I had a lot of ground to make up. A girlfriend bought me a cheap acoustic, I picked up a few songbooks—one by Donovan, I remember—had guitarist friends show me chord changes, and I was hooked. Nothing has had a more profound effect on my life.

cover photograph by Suzanne Burdick

I Believe in Santa

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A chapter excerpt from Hardly Working, the tale of my circuitous career path, published in 2023.

I Believe in Santa

Gibson’s Department Store Lawrence, KS 1978

***

The first time I peered into the Gibson’s lunchroom mirror as a white whiskered Santa, I had to laugh. Sardonic laughter. It had come to this. My intention was to write a feature story for the Kansas City Star: “Santa Like Me.” Then I could explain to any who wondered that I was simply doing background research. By the end of the gig, however, I realized that writing about the quirky things that kids said and did— the angle that a Star piece required—would force me to tamp down my own feelings about this mythical, pipe smoking dude who had become a symbol of capitalism. Santa doesn’t ask kids what they need. He asks what they want. Needs are fine but wants are what matters if GDP levels are to continue upward. Santa was the be-whiskered, Coca-Cola drinking Pope of capitalism. The newspaper would never publish my true thoughts: that impersonating this beloved icon—for money—was a low point of my job cavalcade.

A lowpoint in my job cavalcade

***

My suit and hat were made of stiff red felt-like material, cruel to the touch. The fake beard became a form of torture, causing a brutal rash to break out on my increasingly ulcerous upper lip, requiring gobs of Vaseline. Beneath the hideous whiskers, my philtrum glowed the color of Rudolph’s nose. My aviator style glasses were a dead giveaway of my fakery, and I had no money or inclination to invest in wire frames. My brown sideburns stood out against my white wig and beard. I was a cheesy Santa in a cheesy department store, who bellowed “Yo Ho Ho” (and a bottle of rum) instead of “Ho Ho Ho,” who jigged around his throne when things were slow, as if victimized by Saint Vitus’ Dance disorder. I was a madcap Santa ready for action. Read the entire chapter in Hardly Working

The Writer

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In the late 1970s in Lawrence, Kansas, I was hardly working. Every morning, when Linda left for her job at the Casbah Café and later, when she began teaching first grade, I sat down to write for at least two hours.

My meager income to date had often relied on skills that required my back, my hands, and my patience—but never my writing skills. During these morning sessions I began to write short stories, primarily because they were short. Seemed easier to write something short. I attempted that one true sentence technique ala Hemingway. I bought a copy of the Writer’s Digest and versed myself in the art of the submission. A few of my stories received hand-written rejection slips with words of encouragement from the editor or publisher. Being politely rejected was progress of sorts. Most of the stories were never sent to anyone or seen by anyone but Linda and a close friend or two. They currently rest in a file cabinet to my right.

In this age, prior to personal computers, a yellow legal pad and a #2 and-a-half pencil or a ball point pen were my writing tools. I sat on the same upholstered chair every day, in the same tiny house—that we referred to as the cottage—legal pad on my lap with scattered stacks of other legal pads and loose papers at my feet and on the surrounding furniture. At the end of the writing day, I would straighten the papers into a stack, which Linda referred to as “my piles.”

The Cottage on Johnson Street

During this time, I wrote lyrics for a song that I finally recorded in June 2021. Have a listen:

The Fabulous Johnny A

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Excerpt from my memoir, Hardly Working.

I was probably practicing a guitar lick in my Church stall, on a day the waterbed store was closed, when George called me to come downstairs for some cake. It was his birthday. As I descended the stairs, I heard a note from a pitch pipe followed quickly by the opening lines of the most over-the-top, enthusiasm-on-steroids, opera-style rendition of “Happy Birthday” I had ever heard. Belting it out was a short, sweating gentleman dressed in a blue blazer and red bow tie, his eyes ready to jump out of their sockets, his dark hair slicked back. The performance was post-eccentric. The volume he achieved was astonishing. Could have filled an auditorium. “Ozzie,” said George. “I want you to meet John-John.” John was an opera singing tenor who could hit high “C.” He was a friend of George’s from his Baker University days in Kansas—just the sort of person who would fall into George’s orbit. George had served as John’s protector from the louts who populated the pin ball parlor near Baker. He was the kind of person who had been mocked all of his life for being too boisterous, too different, too unique, too much.  

Look around where you are right now, then proceed ten years into the future. How could I have possibly known that a decade hence I would utilize John’s talents to promote a television channel that no one had yet conceived, in an industry that had barely been born. At this moment, I was not conceiving anything beyond the birthday cake that John was devouring. This guy could eat.  

Here is a compilation of some of my work with John Andrews, one of the most sincere and indefatigable performers I have ever encountered. The first video is pulled from Not For Chowderheads, the 1982 special produced by KTWU, Topeka. The videos that follow were part of a seasonal campaign for MTV while I was marketing director at Sunflower Cablevision in Lawrence, KS.